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Books by Martin Murie


Desert Rats
An adventure story. Five young humans explore a desert land in the harsh heat of mid-summer, meeting other life forms: the weird, the dangerous, the sudden, the beautiful.
By Martin Murie. Packrat Books, 2008, 67 pp. $10.00.
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Lester and Me
Sandy and Lester, very different young men, but as Sandy tells Kathy, "We worked at the same job, got used to each other." They have a talent for trouble, growing up in Wyoming, The Adventure State.
By Martin Murie. Packrat Books, 2007, 138 pp. $12.00.
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Breakout - sequel to Windswept
Old folks, some from nursing homes, team up with a biker and a covey of birdwatchers and hit the road in a transcontinental defense of endangered species. A radical salute to age and activism.
By Martin Murie. Packrat Books, 2005, 306 pp. $15.00.
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Windswept
Jennifer, a scientist rebelling against Big Pharmas, gets help from a Montana biker and a trio of unlikely birdwatchers in Wyoming's roughest mountains.
By Martin Murie. Homestead Publishing, 2001, 160 pp. $14.95.
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Burt's Way
"I have never read a book like BURT's WAY, a mystery with no murder, a detective who is a post-alcoholic ordinary guy who reads Proust because he likes it, and falls in love with hippie women ...a border story that is totally neglected by the media. It's what's between the cities." Mary Scriver, author of Sweetgrass and Cottonwood Smoke.
By Martin Murie. Packrat Books, 2000, 210 pp. $12.00. Purchase

Red Tree Mouse Chronicles
"As with any fable, this one's setting is specific and unimportant, its message universal and very important." Neal Burdick, editor, Adirondac.
By Martin Murie. Packrat Books, 2001, 85 pp. $6.00.
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Seriously Insistent
Friendly, but serious, critique of environmentalism. A defense of bottom up democracy in our attempts to save the earth.
By Martin Murie. Packrat Books, 2003, 72 pp. $7.00.
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Losing Solitude
A story of survival and discovery in a time of momentous and sweeping change. It's also a novel about the unspoken importance of environmental health in everyday life.
By Martin Murie. Homestead Publishing, 1996, 218 pp. $14.95.
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Books by other writers



The Mendocino Papers
"An Informal History of Mendocino County, Volume 1.", by Bruce Anderson

Bruce Anderson came to Mendocino county in 1970, not so much to "go back to the land" as to leave the city, San Francisco, that had turned mean and murderous. He was among hippies, counted himself as one of them. It didn't take long for experiences in the city and in the wild haunts of Mendocino county to turn him into one of the most astringent critics of the hippie generation and of American culture in general.

By Bruce Anderson. AVA, Boonville, CA 95415. 2008. $20.00 ppd.
ISBN 1-4196-9014-0 See the Review by Martin Murie
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Bronze Inside and Out
"A Biographical Memoir of Bob Scriver", by Mary Strachan Scriver

This book is a work of authenticity. Two talented people, Bob Scriver and Mary Strachan met and married and for more than ten years worked together in and at the making of art from the ground up.
Bob, musician and band leader as a youth in Browning, had that feel for art; he could grasp the architecture of animal and human bodies from his life as hunter, horseman, taxidermist and western hands-on worker. His reputation as a sculptor in bronze and his pivotal role in the rise of "cowboy art" are well-known.

By Mary Strachan Scriver. Calgary University Press, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. 2007. 372 pp. $44.95.
See the Review by Martin Murie
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Arguing With The Wind
"A Spiritual Journey Into the Alaskan Wilderness", by Walt McLaughlin

This book stands out among the huge flocks of Nature adventures because of its honesty, a true searching.

During a two-week stay in south-east Alaska Walt keeps his cool, discards egoistic notions, lets us in on his thoughts and how those thoughts shift as he encounters bears, ravens, eagles and others of the wild, and weather.
By Walt McLaughlin. Woodthrush Books, 2003. Purchase

Brave New West
"Morphing Moab at the Speed of Greed", by Jim Stiles

Bringing insight based on decades of residence in Moab, the author makes a provocative and compelling argument that the amenities economy most environmentalists hail as the solution to the woes of the rural West is in fact creating an unprecedented impact of its own.
With a blend of travelogue, local color and geography, Stiles engages readers with folksy humor while defending the lifestyle of the "pre-cappuccino rural Westerners" and exposing the paradox that underlies the professed good intentions of liberal newcomers.

By Jim Stiles. University of Arizona Press, 2007, 262 pp. $12.00. Purchase

Predatory Bureaucracy
"Extermination of Wolves and the Transformation of the West", by Michael J. Robinson.

If you are interested in wolves you will want this book. It goes into predator programs conducted by the Bureau of Biological Survey (now Fish and Wildlife Service) in close contact with ranchers in the west and the state governments of western states. There are stories of smart wolves, so clever at evading traps that they were named; and stories of smart trappers too. These stories alone are worth the price of the book.
The history goes on, bringing us into the period of internal revolt inside the Bureau, pro-predators and kill-them-all factions. This is a good snapshot of the interior of the Bureau, the agonizing choices individual biologists had to make.
Finally, Robinson takes us into the current scene, with special emphasis on the turmoil in the southwest re introduction of the Mexican wolf subspecies: politics, rancher's and residents' views, the biological requirements of the wolves, and so on.
The author is obviously in favor of saving habitats of wild species, but he does an excellent job of looking at the several sides of this great western drama.

Robinson is Conservation Advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity.
Michael J. Robinson. University Press of Colorado, 2005. Purchase